Alan Kimball <kimball@uoregon.edu>
Editor of SAC [ID]
with the essential help of other instructors and students in the
2011wi:University of Oregon History Department Graduate Colloquium on the Mongols,
Professor Andrew Goble, lead instructor

<>1236:Volga River, below the
confluence with the Kama River | Bolgar administrative capital
taken by Chinggis-khan's great general Subutai at the head of the new Golden Horde
[ID]

<>1237:1242; Eurasian
“Pontic” steppes [MAP] |
After initial successes northward up the Volga River at Bolgar
Batu-khan and his cavalry launched unstoppable assault westward
across the Yaik, Syr Darya and Volga rivers*--Carpini [ID] described this now famously vicious campaign,
based on what was held to be true in his clerical world and what he learned on his
trip [old-English translation here not yet fully re-Englished] =

[Ugedei-khan] sent his nephew Batu-khan against the country of Altisoldan
[Kipchak lands, along NW shores of Caspian, in region of Yaik (Ural) River], and against the
people called Bisermini [Moslems], who were Saracens [Arabs, remains of the
earlier Arabic empire (huge LOOP) in
communities of merchants] but spoke the language of Comania
[ID]. The Tatars invading their country, fought
with them and subdued them in battle. But a certain city called Barchin [on the
Syr Darya River, perhaps modern-day Tashkent] resisted them a long time. For the
inhabitants had excavated many ditches and trenches around their city. As a
result, the Tatars
could not take it until they filled those ditches. When the inhabitants of Sarguit
heard this, they came forth to
meet the Tatars and surrendered to them of their own accord. As a result, their city was not destroyed.
Still, the Tatars killed many of them, and others they carried away into captivity
[slavery]. Taking spoils, Tatars filled the city with other
inhabitants, and so marched forth against the city Orna.

This town [near mouth of the Don River near the Sea of Azov,
an inlet of the Black Sea] was very populous and exceeding
rich. Many Christians lived there, as namely Gasarians, Russians, and Alans, with others, and Saracens
also. The government of the city was in Saracen hands. It stands on a mighty riuer, and is a kind of port
town in which a great market takes place. And when the Tatars could not otherwise overcome
it, they diverted the river that runs through the city out of his banks and so
flooded the city and drowned the inhabitants and their
goods.

That completed, the Tatars set forth against Russia, and made foul
havoc there, destroying cities and castles
and murdering the people. They laid siege a long while to the chief city of Russia,
Kiev. Finally they took it and killed the inhabitants. Traveling through that country, we
later found lying upon the earth an innumerable multitude of dead men's
skulls and bones. For it was a very large and populous city, but it is now
essentially destroyed. Scarcely 200 houses remain, and the inhabitants are kept in extreme bondage.

Then they proceeded out of Russia and Comania against Hungarians
and Polonians. Many in these territories were slain in the manner described
earlier. If the Hungarians had manfully withstood them, the Tatars would have been confounded and driven
back. Returning from there, Tatars invaded the country of the pagan Mordvins and conquered them
in battle. Then they marched against the people called Byleri, or Bulgaria magna
[south of the Danube River], and utterly
wasted the country. From hence they proceeded [again?] towards the North against the people called Bastarci
or Hungaria magna, and conquered them also.

And so going on further North, they came to the Parossitæ, who
having little stomachs and small mouths, eat nothing at all. When they cook meat, they stand or sit over the
pot, receiving the steam or smoke thereof, and are only therewith nourished. If they eat anything it is
very little. From there they came to the Samogetæ, who live only by hunting, and
use to dwell in tabernacles only, and to wear garments made of animal skins. From there they proceeded
to a country on the shores of an Ocean sea [Baltic?], where they found certain monsters, who in all things resembled the shape
of men, saving that their feet were like the feet of an ox. Indeed they had men's heads but dogs' faces. They spoke, as
it were, two words like men, but at the third they barked like dogs.

From [that monster-infested northern sea shore] the
Tatars returned to Comania where some of them remain to this day.

Accusations were presented to Batu-khan that a certain Russian
prince named Andrei rustled Tatar horses from designated pastures and sold them to others. Although it could
not be proved, he was nonetheless put to death. The younger brother and the wife of the executed prince
heard of this and came to Batu-khan in order to plea that the Russian princely throne
not be taken from them. Following Tatar custom, Batu-khan commanded the younger brother to marry his deceased brother's wife.
He also commanded the widow to take the younger brother as her husband. She
answered that she would rather die than so heinously to transgress her law. However, Batu delivered her
unto the younger brother, although they both refused as much as they could. Carrying them to bed, the Tatars forced
the lamenting and weeping younger brother to lie down and commit incest with his brother's wife.

<>1246:Karakorum,
via Batu-khan's pre-Sarai camp| Giovanni of Pian del Carpini[ID] dispatched by Pope Innocent IV as ambassador
to the Great Khan Güyük
*--Carpini's extensive report contained valuable first-hand observations but also fanciful accounts based on
credulous hearsay [EG] [Here is full
Old English TXT | Here is a
more modern Englished E-TXT |
Excerpts = VSB,1:46| DMR2:114-28 |
DMR3:153-67 | RRH,1:85-8]
*--At Karakorum, Carpini met the Russian goldsmith Cosmas [?Kuz'ma] who built
the throne of the Great Khan [ch31]
*--Carpini carried back a reply from the Great Khan Güyük to Pope Innocent
IV. The main body of the khan's letter was written in Persian, the preamble in Turkish, the date entered
in Arabic [TXT]. The magisterial khan was miffed by
the pope's presumptuous letter. The khan scoffed at the suggestion that he be baptized
and rejected outright the suggestion that the
Mongols retreat from Hungarian lands. The khan therefore dismissed the pope’s request for peaceful relationships between them.
The khan said that peace was impossible
until the pope himself and other Christian princes came before the khan's throne to pay due tribute to
him. In summary, the issue was "who's in charge here?"

<>1253:
Sarai, in the lower Volga valley, a great nomad metropolis
was founded by Batu-khan [ID]
*1253:1255; French King Louis IX sent Catholic Friar Willem van Ruysbroeck [Rubruck(ID)]
to Karakorum and Sarai. He published a colorful and informative account,
Journey...
[TXT |
CF=KNIGHT
holdings of Rubruck and of the other early ambassador Carpini
[ID], etc | Rubruck excerpts =
VSB,1:46 |
DMR2:129-31 |
DMR3:168-70]
*--MAP
of Rubruck's route gives excellent geo-physical (but incompletely labeled) sense of the vast, rich and
waving feather-grass prairies [Steppes] that stretch west to east (Rubruck's route the reverse of that taken by
the Mongols) from the semi-land-locked Mediterranean and Black seas, across the
fine rivers Dnepr, Don, Volga and Ural, over the basins of the utterly
land-locked Caspian and Aral seas, past Lake Balkhash, up the Ili River through
Uyghur lands [ID]
via the "Dzhungari Gates" into what is now the far western provinces
of "China" and "Mongolia", and onward to
the central urban center of the Mongol khans, Karakorum, located just south of
the world's most capacious body of fresh water, Lake Baikal. These are the
western and central stretches of the legendary "Silk Road"
*--Especially instructive were Rubruck's observations about how eastern European captives were thriving in Mongol
lands. Frenchwoman Paquette was captured and forced to walk from Budapest to the Mongol capital, but was now settled in and
happily married to a Russian carpenter
*--In Karakorum, Moengke-khan allowed Rubruck to offer mass and other spiritual services to Catholic and Orthodox subjects
of the khan. Rubruck took part in great religious debates between Buddhists, Muslims and Nestorian Christians, sponsored by the
delighted and curious khan himself. The khan said to Rubruck, "God has given you [Christians] the Scriptures and you do not
obey them; whereas to us he has given soothsayers, and we do as they tell us and live at peace"
*--NB! suggestion
that Moengke-khan still adhered to traditional animist paganism and had not joined the trend
toward Islam among western Mongol leaders [ID]
//
*--Johan Elveskog, Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (2010)

<>1257:1266; Golden Horde |
Berke-khan [Berkh-khan] issued an early decree on free trade [VSB,1:48-9]
*--As khan he made Islam the "official" religion of the Horde
*1258:Baghdad sacked by Golden Horde as Berke turned his swift armies against the Turks
*1260:Damascus taken by Golden Horde, but the Mongols stopped north of Jerusalem and backed off
*--In the more than century-long relief from Mongol power that followed, Ottoman Turkish power waxed strong

<>1270:Novgorod joined Hanseatic
League and became trade mediator in NW Europe & Asia [LOOP]

<>1270s:Mongols backed away from their
furthest incursions into the Baltic river drainages
[ID]

<>1290:1312; Golden Horde power
fragmented at the edges | Karakorum increasingly a ceremonial center
*1290s:Eurasia in the era of Marco Polo and the great empire of the Golden Horde --
[MAP]

<>1303:1325; Moscow grand prince Yurii III
ruled with his Mongol bride, sister of the khan of the Golden Horde
*--After Kievan disintegration and Mongol destruction, two very different urban
strongholds, representing two very different "Russias", rose in power and
prominance = Novgorod and Moscow

<>1307:1316; Rashid al-Din
[ID] and associates compiled "Compendium of Chronicles"
[ID], an account of
the Mongols after Chinggis-khan, especially the Il-Khanate
[ID]. Rashid was an
experienced and important statesman in the service of the Mongols, and he was a
gifted historian and pundit

<>1312:1357; Forty-five
years of final efforts at re-integration of Golden Horde
*--Uzbek-khan (-1342), followed by Djanibek-khan (-1357) restored power of Djuqi-Ulus and expanded territory of control

<>1328:1341; Moscow prince Ivan Danilovich ruled 14 years as
Ivan I Kalita
[Moneybag], first Muscovite grand prince [velikii kniaz']
[ID]
*1328:Moscow became Metropolitan See of Russian Orthodox Church. Church
hierarchy worked to wean Moscow from Golden Horde and to reconnect with
Byzantine heritage, or at least to rebalance the influence of these two powerful
models [ID]

<>1354:Ottoman Turkish power crossed the
straits just south of the Byzantine imperial capital city Constantinople and
entered Europe for the first time. It would take another century, but the end
was in sight for the Byzantine Empire

<>1357:1380; Twenty-three years in
which 25 khans ruled in Sarai
[ID] =
(1) In the SW of Mongol power, Khorezm [Khwarezm-shakh] fell away from
centralized control &
(2) In the W, Polish-Lithuanian dual monarchy moved into lower Dnepr basin
(3) And then in the NW =

<>1389:1425; Moscow grand prince Vasilii I reigned for 36 years
after being put on throne by Mongol khan[ID]

<>1395:Golden
Horde capital city Sarai [ID] burned to the ground when Tamerlane (Timur
the Lame) defeated and seized the throne from Tokhtamysh-khan
*--Tamerlane turned all his energies to the SW
[ID]
*1399:By this time large numbers of Mongols were fleeing chaos in their midst
and settling in Russian lands [ID]

<>1409:prince Edigei of the Golden Horde
warned Vasilii I about neglecting his obligations
[ID]

"Chingizid" royal lineage not unfamiliar, but absence of aristocracy was a distinctly
"un-European" social twist
Merchants were a privileged class, also un-European
Military decimal system -- de-tribalization & implied ethnic egalitarianism
but also social pulverization

INSTITUTIONS

Khans and tsars did however both enjoy an institutional position of absolute,
arbitrary and irregular power
Both insisted on internal and external "sovereignty", military and "civic" political power and authority
Autocratic absolutism, backed up by dependent military servitors, great warrior generals and cavalry forces
[EG]
Khan associated with population under conditions of "bound service"
[Vernadsky TXT on Yasa:347-8]
Funded by a subordinate economy, serviced for them by a privileged merchant class

Contrast institutional life of cities independent of Mongol
power and those subordinated =
Novgorod and Moscow [EG; LOOP on "veche"]

Daruga (close associates of Mongol ruler-commanders -- "henchmen") like Slavic druzhinaMany other
historical examples of this suggests the following =
Similarities may not be result of imposition or borrowing but of
parallel development under similar conditions
The Eurasian steppes were a powerful and shaping shared "ecological" experience

Presuming uniformity of meaning of big terms across all utterances and over all time

Imposed but often imaginary ethnic, national or religious identities =
What was a “Mongol”,
“Turk”, “Russian”, “Muslim”, “Jew”, “Christian”, “Buddhist”, etc.? [EG=Khazars]

We look at "long duration", but judging larger epochs is difficult. Centuries can come to seem simple "events".
Remember = Mongols ruled in Russia for a period longer than the existence of the USA

We look at vast stretches of territory, but judging huge expanses is difficult.
Battuta's travels [ID]
might be taken to be a spring-break road trip.
Remember =
The east-west breadth of Eurasia is almost
ten times the distance from Eugene OR to San Francisco CA